The water toilet has been accepted and used as a standard method for disposing of human waste from private dwellings, office and industrial buildings, etc. Certainly the water toilet does the job involving messy material in a neat and clean manner and, consequently, the water toilet has become an indispensible element in the high standard of living in modern society. As the population of the human race grows out of bounds and our life style demands an ever increasing amount of water for use in households and industries, it is becoming more and more clear that water is not the boundless abundant resource that it was before, and there is little doubt that water will become an expensive commodity in the future when there is not enough of it to go around. In average households, about forty five percent of the total amount of the water used daily is wasted to flush the toilet. Firstly, it does not make sense to waste forty five percent of the water used daily by each household to flush out waste while we are talking and worrying about dwindling water resources. Secondly, it is downright unwise to mix a small amount of human waste with large amounts of clean water and then spend a large amount of resources to build a network of sewer pipes and waste treatment plants to separate the clean water from the waste. Thirdly, it is less than intelligent to dump the waste effluent into streams and rivers and, then to argue and worry about polluting natural water resources.
The major portion of the water problems confronting us today can be resolved and eliminated by ridding ourselves of the habit of using the water toilet. We have been sophisticated enough to mobilize a vast amount of technology and social resources to cope with the water pollution problems created by our water toilet, yet no one has seriously questioned whether it is necessary to have these problems at all. Indeed, it is a common folly of many experts who try frantically to find an expensive solution to the problem, but fail to examine the rationality of the problem. It should be mentioned that a number of solutions have been addressed to the problem of wasting water and polluting water resources resulting from the use of water toilets. The compost toilet does not use any water. However, it lacks cleanliness and leaves messy end products of compost. It is quite doubtful that the compost toilet will ever be accepted by a civilized society used to the water toilet. The incinerating toilet of present day technology burns off the solid waste as well as the liquid waste and, consequently, does not use any water and leaves no end product. The use of the incinerating toilets in masses is unacceptable because it constitutes a fire hazard in private dwellings, is too energy-intensive and creates a serious problem of air pollution. There are recycling toilets which recycle the water or oil used to flush the toilet. These recycling toilets require an initial capital investment and operating/maintenance costs too high for average households. Furthermore, the recycling toilet does not solve the problem in essence because it leaves messy end products which have to be processed by other means. In conclusion, all of the nonconventional toilet technology available today is not good enough to replace the conventional water toilet.